This one will do it

I am on the search of another cure for my tortoise balloons. The diet isn't working. It is ages before the hospital appointment. I must embrace the homoeopathic approach.

To this end, I first have to abandon the kids in a park. Not any old park, obviously. The park of our Monday meet. When a bunch of home educators come together so we can introduce kids to other kids, call it the S-word and, while the offspring disappear to beat each other with sticks, chat about how no-one understand us.

I think of our local home ed groups a little like an extended family - dysfunctional disparate people, some of whom have nothing in common except for the fact that we all educate outside of normal - yet we still come together routinely to alternatively amuse and piss each other off.

We can support each other too of course, while we bitch and whine, which means I feel safe to dump my kids on them while I attend to something much more important. Me. I need to zip across town and track down this miracle homoeopathic creme with its seductive packaging and fragrant promises.

Back in the park, someone would phone if there was blood.

See? This is how focused I am on the kids and home education in general. Not at all. I am the centre of my attention. I have to make myself be fit for purpose, which presently I am so clearly not.

For a start, I look ahead in my diary and see that I am soon to be sleeping in a field, joining all the other hardened home educators in the annual sleep-in-a-field-fest.

I doubt my capabilities for enduring that, even when I am on top form, so I have already negotiated an opt-out clause mid-week. But I'm worried that in this present state of health I shall not be able to carry out this sleeping-in-a-field responsibility at all. I won't be strong enough. Shark, Squirrel and Tiger will never forgive me.

So the only option is to dump them with the helpful extended family who can complain about me when I leg it, and go grovelling in alternative remedy shops looking for the perfect answer.

Yes! I find it! Aqua, Prunus dulcis, Calendula, Lavendula, Anthemis nobilis, Citrus grandis. A force of Roman deities sweeping to my aid!

But this cure will work, trust me. It promises everything I want in the world!

Instant relief, perfect skin, normal eyelids, a properly responsive autoimmune system, refreshed spirit, fortitude, emotional strength, the stamina to sleep a week in a wet field, weight gain to make a shapely thigh and not a thick ankle, a dinner of spinach and salmon, deep red wine, a vulnerable naked man, and a tiny toy fox terrier to keep in my handbag.

This could be it. Now all I need do is apply it thrice a day, and lo! The magic will prevail!